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Ahead of the FIRST Global Challenge, the Cayman Islands National Robotics Team recently completed a series of educational visits with Aureum Re, Caribbean Utilities Company (CUC), Digicel and Health City Cayman Islands as part of their pre-competition curriculum to learn about STEM careers available locally.

Dart Minds Inspired introduced FIRST robotics to the Cayman Islands earlier this year through a partnership with Aureum Re, CUC, Digicel, and Health City. Each company is associated with one of the STEM subjects: Health City represents science, Digicel, technology; CUC, engineering, and Aureum Re, mathematics.

The students’ first field trip was to CUC’s headquarters where they learned about the variety of STEM-related careers available at Cayman’s only public electrical utility and toured its facilities at Industrial Park.

Next was the office of Aureum Re in Camana Bay where the students learned about the reinsurance industry, and how mathematics and statistics are used to asses risk.

Although the number of reinsurance companies in Cayman is increasing, Aureum Re CEO David Towriss explained that there are currently only two Caymanians qualified as actuaries and that there are significant employment opportunities locally for young people who pursue a career in actuarial science.

The students then travelled to Health City’s extensive campus in East End where patients from across the globe come to receive high-quality, affordable healthcare.

The wide-ranging tour took them from Health City’s laboratory to its department of Advanced Medical Imaging and Radiology Services and even to the hospital’s “back of house” where the complex internal systems that keep the medical centre running are housed.

Finally, representatives of Digicel, including CEO Raul Nicholson-Coe, stopped by the National Team’s headquarters in downtown George Town to give the students an overview of the company’s operations, discuss how machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) are changing the telecommunications industry, and see the Team’s robot in action.

With their robot almost complete, the National Team is preparing to travel to Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE), to participate in the 2019 FIRST Global Challenge.

Themed around the 14 Grand Challenges of Engineering identified by the National Academy of Engineering, the FIRST Global Challenge empowers young people to use STEM to solve global problems. This year’s theme - “Ocean Opportunities” - aims to draw attention to the ways in which ocean pollution negatively affect marine life and human health.

In the game, the Cayman Islands National Team will be randomly paired with two teams from different countries to form an alliance that will compete against another alliance of three nations.